How to get the best credit card processing rate (Merchant Services)
Small business owners around the country are being ripped off every day. (Hint: look in the mirror.)
While you’re working hard to make a buck and a close few more sales, your credit card processor is probably making a huge profit off of your hard earned dollars.
Take a look at the credit card processing rates on your statement. You don’t want to, right? It’s confusing, and they like it that way. A statement fee here, a PCI fee there, an IRS fee, etc. The bottom line is that most business owners are paying way too much. But why?
The first thing we need to talk about is called the Interchange Rate. This is the fee charged by Visa and Mastercard, and there is nothing anyone can do to avoid it. It’s the base cost that the card companies charge you to accept credit cards. This ranges from as low as 0.05% on a debit card to as high as 2.95% + 20¢ on every sale. That’s right, there is no set flat rate. If anyone says you can accept all credit cards at a flat rate of 1.5% or something like that, they are lying. Yes, salesmen lie sometimes.
View Visa/MC Interchange Rates are linked on our site. The exact interchange fee charged to you is based on the type of card, whether the card is present when you accept the payment, and whether it’s a business card or rewards card, and believe it or not, the type of business you are in. If you sell cars, your Visa/MC Interchange Rate is different than if you sell groceries. Seems unfair right?
It turns out that most salesmen you talk to at any company don’t actually work for Visa or Mastercard. Those guys work for companies that are called acquirers, also called “independent sales organizations.” And since there is nothing you or we can do about the Interchange Rate, what you have to do is find the cheapest ISO so you can get the best credit card processing rate.
Whether you use a huge company like Merchant Warehouse, or a bank like Wells Fargo, the bottom line is, how much are you paying to your ISO? The answer is that you’re paying them a percentage of every sale as high as 2% on top of the Visa/MC rate, depending on what you sell and how you sell it.
Yes, the type of business you are in can affect not only the interchange rate but also how much your ISO charges you. They don’t care how good you are at your business or how faithful your customers are, the ISO wants a percentage. Are you starting to get mad yet? I hope so!
So how on Earth are you going to get the best credit card processing rates? Simple. By not paying any rate at all to the ISO. What?
The best credit card processing rate is no rate at all.
Payment Depot is the only ISO that doesn’t take a percentage of your sales.
With your $199 annual membership, you get a promise – all we charge you is 25¢, and you get only the TRUE COST of the Visa/MC interchange rate, which we spoke about above. But what matters most is what you don’t pay. You will never pay us a percentage of your sale on top of the Visa/MC interchange rate.
Payment Depot is the only company offering the true cost of Visa/MC interchange rates without an added percentage. Every other company wants a percentage on top of the interchange rate, but we only charge 25¢. And if you do a lot of transactions, you can go with our Best Value annual plan and pay only 10¢ per transaction to us.
So how to you get the best rate on credit card processing? Simple – use Payment Depot and stop paying your credit card processor a percentage. Start saving money today.
The best credit card processing rate is no rate at all!